Created by Richard Tafel, using data from Pew Research. He uses two dimensions: left/right; and traditional/modern/postmodern
The group that is least understood in American politics is the Postmodern Right. While postmodernism on the Left focuses on the failure of modernity to address social justice in term of identity politics, the Postmodern Right questions the fundamental economic worldview of the Modern Right. In Pew’s survey, they show up as a new category named “Market Skeptic Republicans.”
These are the folks trying to throw Republican-leaning libertarians under the bus. They were well represented at the National Conservatism conference. They are only 10 percent of “engaged voters,” but as I see it they are punching above their weight in the Trump era.
For “traditional” I read “Christian believers.” On the left, they include African-American Christians whose ethnicity ties them to Democrats, even if their views on social issues do not.
The Modern Left and the Modern Right are those of us who still like capitalism and freedom. But the Modern Left is down to just 13 percent of all engaged voters, compared with 36 percent for the Postmodern left, which now dominates the Democratic Party. The Modern Right is 29 percent of all engaged voters, which means that they dominate the right overall, which is only 45 percent of engaged voters.
This is an interesting taxonomy to work with.
1. I think that if we had a proportional representation system, it is quite possible that parties would emerge along these lines.
2. I think that the rapid decline of the Modern Left and the corresponding rise of the Postmodern Left is the most significant and for me the most frightening development of the past decade or so.
3. My current thinking is that Elizabeth Warren will win the Democratic nomination, and possibly the election. For Biden to win, the Postmodern Left has to fail to unite behind a candidate. But Warren has a strong base among college-educated women, who are a significant Democratic constituency. I expect that in the early primaries/caucuses she will pull away from Sanders and the rest, so that by Super Tuesday it will be a two-person race. In that game, Biden is playing a losing hand.
4. Under a Parliamentary system, the various parties would have to form coalitions. As it is, we are effectively in a world of minority governments. President Trump has no support anywhere on the left and has disaffected part of the Modern Right. If Senator Warren wins the Presidency, then the Postmodern Left will attempt to govern with almost 2/3 of the country in disagreement with them. But part of the Postmodern Left philosophy is not to compromise with anyone.
Have a nice day.
The most postmodern thing about the new postmodern Trumpian right is its total embrace of the idea that an objective reality is entirely optional. “Reality is not reality,” “alternate facts.” “What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.” “Mexico will pay for the wall.” “The Chinese pay the tariffs we impose on them.” And, of course, conspiracy theories everywhere.
It was telling that when Trump was at peak political capital and sent Sean Spicer out for his very first meeting with the press the thing he most wanted to establish was that you shouldn’t trust your own eyes about whose inauguration day crowd was bigger. You can’t get any more postmodern than this view of reality.
“The most postmodern thing about the new postmodern Trumpian right is its total embrace of the idea that an objective reality is entirely optional.”
What are you talking about? The most fundamental problem with the “Modern Right” is that they deny biological and psychological reality. If they had realized Hispanics weren’t “natural conservatives” (or even what is conservative) they wouldn’t be in the mess they are.
“capitalism and freedom”
Is Singapore not capitalist? I’d say they are more capitalist than we are where it counts. Do they not have freedom? I don’t feel very “free” when I can’t park my car in huge swaths of Baltimore without it getting vandalized, or ride my bike through a neighborhood without youths chasing after me to knock me down and steal the bike.
You people are hopeless. Objectively better countries and systems exist that have passed the empirical test of delivering real results and you refuse to learn a damn thing from them because it differs from your ideology.
>—-“What are you talking about?”
I thought it was pretty clear what I was talking about. I was talking about how postmodern the Trumpian war on reality is and I gave seven examples of that.
None of which you even discussed before changing the subject to your contempt for Hispanics and blacks and your admiration for Singaporean authoritarianism.
My view of Singapore is they are the most libertarian nation on earth but they have the strongest home owner association on earth.
And living in California, I hear all the time from outside libertarians that our state has loads of local restrictions on how to build your home. However, in a lot of neighborhoods like mine, the heavy regulations are not passed by local government but implemented by the local home owner association. (Yes, Sacramento is getting worse and I do think locally we have elect some Republicans after Trump’s gone.)
Those of you infatuated with Singapore should check out Handle’s excellent comment well below here explaining why freedom of speech is so fundamental.
Orwell was famous for making the same point even though he was a democratic socialist.
Private homeowners associations have proven to be big mistakes and the laws authorizing them should all be repealed. Landlords can exercise control over tenants, and condominium complex management can exercise control over residents, but only the state should exercise state-like controls and levies over independent fee-simple property owners.
I wish the “reality is not optional” crowd was entirely contained within Trump’s supporters. It’s not. For example, if climate change is the threat many think it is, then the left’s rejection of nuclear power is perhaps the most damaging thing on earth right now. Trump moronically stating that Mexico will pay for the wall is quite benign in comparison. (The “reality is not optional” part of my example is the fact that science has come to the consensus that nuclear power is quite safe today. And that widespread use of fission could lead to practical fusion, which is even safer.)
Interesting. My hopefully/wishfully objective assessment of nuclear power has flipped from mostly favorable to mostly pessimistic. What we’ve learned over the last 40 or so years is that the worst-case-scenarios, nuclear meltdowns, are far more likely than anyone anticipated but that the health impact of these events is negligible. Since most accident assessments focused mostly on health impacts, we completely underestimated the high economic cost of large swaths of land contaminated by low-level radiation from accidents. In North America, natural gas fired plants for electricity generation seem to have the best set of tradeoffs.
This clearly fails the Ideological Turing Test. This is obviously expressed by someone who dislikes Trump. A Trump supporter wouldn’t agree with this.
Secondly, some philosophers argue that much of truth is relative and not objective.
Skim this book, “Making Sense of Relative Truth”: https://johnmacfarlane.net/makingsense.pdf
.>—-“This clearly fails the Ideological Turing Test. This is obviously expressed by someone who dislikes Trump. A Trump supporter wouldn’t agree with this.”
Well, the quotes I cited were from Trump supporters. But maybe they are not required to even agree with themselves in a sufficiently postmodern view.
So let’s take one of your examples, the inauguration photo.
I’ll copy paste what I wrote on this elsewhere, where the question was about Republican survey responders talking about the inauguration photo.
“Indeed. Fact checkers are garbage.
Even when facts being asserted are true (which they often aren’t), they are divorced from the context.
Why was the inauguration photo study commissioned. To make Trump look unpopular. But we already knew that Trump was very unpopular in DC (where the inauguration took place) and that it was a rainy day (bad for turnout). Why even talk about this? It’s a non-story, unless you want to use it to make some broader point about Trumps legitimacy. But he draws his legitimacy from a different part of the population then the kind of people who go to inaugurations.
What facts should be amplified and what facts should be suppressed. If there are two shootings in a weekend, and one shooter says they did it for right wing reasons and one says they did it for left wing reasons, which gets lead on the news?
I think people see someone coming to them with this survey and conclude “this person has an agenda, I’m not going to be a bit player in their dog and pony show”. Knowing the purpose of the survey is hostile, they respond in kind.”
There is the truth of the photo, and there is the truth that the people making a big deal of it have an agenda and are hostile to you and your interests and have shown bad faith in their decisions as supposed caretakers of the truth.
Here is the reality. People are self interested, form groups to advance their self interest, and they don’t give a shit about universalistic morals (and only talk about them as a way of gaining power). Trump supports get this FACT about reality. Discourse is a battlefield where you pursue self interest.
“Here is the reality. People are self interested, form groups to advance their self interest, and they don’t give a shit about universalistic morals (and only talk about them as a way of gaining power). Trump supports get this FACT about reality. Discourse is a battlefield where you pursue self interest.”
Ughh!
Morals aren’t fairy tale ideas of niceness and unicorns. They are ideas about how to achieve a larger social cohesion, for the very purpose of supporting greater individual self interest.
Even if you care only about your own interests, you are faced with the reality that you are part of a world with other people who feel the same way.
You are faced with a dilemma. You achieve greater self interest, by far, through social cooperation, but you also degrade your own level of control. Where you draw the line is strategic.
Trump supporters have decided to make a major retreat to greater control, and that means giving up gains from cooperation. What is so tedious is the pathetic whining about how they can’t have it both ways.
>—“So let’s take one of your examples, the inauguration photo.”
Yes, let’s do that.
>—“Why even talk about this? It’s a non-story, unless you want to use it to make some broader point about Trumps legitimacy.”
The ONLY reason this became an issue is that Trump very deliberately chose to make it an issue. Never before in American history has inauguration crowd size ever been a significant controversy and that long tradition could have continued. Except that Trump deliberately CHOSE to make it, not just an issue, but the very first one he wanted Sean Spicer to make a big deal of. TRUMP made this a story because he wanted to establish a new lower standard for Presidential claims about empirical facts. And he succeeded.
>—-“Here is the reality. People are self interested, form groups to advance their self interest, and they don’t give a shit about universalistic morals (and only talk about them as a way of gaining power). Trump supports get this FACT about reality. Discourse is a battlefield where you pursue self interest.”
Now THAT is a proper postmodern manifesto. Which is precisely my point. I am pointing put that Trump is the epitome of postmodernism. You are telling me why you think that Trumpian postmodernism is good.
“Now THAT is a proper postmodern manifesto.”
Post Modernism is the believe that empirical facts don’t exist.
I don’t, and I don’t think most people supporting Trump, think empirical facts don’t exist.
What some people do believe is that people will manipulate, inflate, suppress, or outright lie about facts in order to achieve their own ends. This observation of human behavior is, in itself, A FACT. Would you disagree that people do these things?
If you are faced with people that do these things, you have to fight back. If you believe they do these things because their interests are in some fundamental way totally incontrovertible with your own then conflict and victory are the only options.
“They are ideas about how to achieve a larger social cohesion, for the very purpose of supporting greater individual self interest.”
How have your ideas worked? Has continually surrendering to every leftist demand and being the party of “leftism from five years ago” worked? Has it created cohesion? Did mass demographic replacement by hostile foreigners achieve “cohesion”.
You people had assumptions about what would achieve cohesion…and those assumptions failed. FAILED. This isn’t an opinion, its empirical reality.
Societies that made different choices (say, Asia which didn’t have immigration and didn’t adopt wokeness) have far better cohesion then we do.
What gains do you expect to get form “cooperation”. Cooperation isn’t seen by the other side as an instance to find mutually beneficial equilibrium. It’s seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited. If you want them to cooperate (to the extent that is even possible) you need to convince them that not doing so will leave them worse off than just trying to steamroll you. So far your side hasn’t been able to make a credible case for that.
Not every Asian society is slow to stop Immigration is probably a key component to the Singapore nation. (And yes they slowed down a lot)
Secondly, I am not altogether sold that Japan or South Korea strong cohesion is been completely successful here. It really seems like a problem to grow an economy with declining populations.
Also, the reality of Compton, CA was it was the gang capital during the 1990s and had terrible riots in 1992. (Way beyond Ferguson or Baltimore here.) And crime rates are ridiculously less than 1990 and a key component of Compton revival was Hispanic gentrification. (Anyway I still hold that a big portion of Immigrant population influence in California is the various Asian populations that nobody talks about.)
I am not total Open Borders (call me 65% open borders) but I do find the US populations that support more Open Borders are the Southwestern border states.
>—-“What some people do believe is that people will manipulate, inflate, suppress, or outright lie about facts in order to achieve their own ends. This observation of human behavior is, in itself, A FACT. Would you disagree that people do these things?”
The fact that people “do” engage in various forms of dishonesty from time to time does not justify the deliberate attempt to completely break down the norms that limit such behavior among public officials. Norms are important and fragile things. They are much easier to destroy than build.
If Trump had wanted to point out that his inauguration crowd was smaller because of the weather or because of the fact that D.C. is predominately Democratic that would have been fine. But no previous American President would have simply told you not to believe your own eyes. This level of disregard for the truth is something new and is a deliberate strategy whether or not you think it is a justifiable strategy.
Greg,
These norms broke down a long time ago. If you didn’t notice, you didn’t want to. Think about how many outright lies you experience in a given day that you’ve put up with because you know you can’t do shit about it. It’s a lot.
You’re like willie coyote, having run off the cliff, thinking that as long as you don’t look down you won’t fall.
The bottom line is that either a norm has good results or it doesn’t. If a norm has bad empirical results, it should be abandoned.
People figured out how to exploit the “civility norm” in ways that were fundamentally unsustainable.
You know there are plenty of examples I can think of of LKY being very civil to people. And there are plenty I can think of like this:
“If you are a troublemaker…it’s our job to politically destroy you…Everybody knows that in my bad I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one. You take my on, I take my hatchet, we meet at the cul-de-sac.”
“Whoever governs Singapore must have that iron in him. Or give it up. This is not a game of cards! This is your life and mine! I’ve spent a whole lifetime building this and as long as I’m in charge, nobody is going to knock it down.”
“Between being love and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.”
Whether you should be civil to someone should be based on whether they are going to be civil towards you and that civility will have positive outcomes. If it doesn’t, if civility is seen as weakness to be exploited or as passivity in which to take action against someones will, then it’s worthless.
asdf,
>—-“Societies that made different choices (say, Asia which didn’t have immigration and didn’t adopt wokeness) have far better cohesion then we do.”
Cohesion. Now there is a euphemism.
The “cohesion” in China has been achieved with an Orwellian degree of repression of what most of us take to be basic freedoms.
The “cohesion” in Japan has come with decades of the kind of economic stagnation that immigration restriction and population decline produces. Immigration in the U.S. has correlated quite nicely with economic growth. The Great Depression happened during one of our times of least immigration. Crime in America has been going down, not up in the last quarter century compared to the time before that when America was “great.”
The “cohesion” in Singapore has come at the cost of political freedom and freedom of speech. And it’s really not that impressive that they can achieve prosperity in a city state located in one of the most geographically desirable locations anywhere for world trade.
The “cohesion” you are so nostalgic for in prior American history is largely the product of a sanitizing of that history anyway. In your world there was more “cohesion” when Jim Crow and lynchings were at their peak.
Cohesion. Now there is a euphemism.
The “cohesion” in China has been achieved with an Orwellian degree of repression of what most of us take to be basic freedoms.
——————-
I won’t defend everything the CCP does, but I’m not some doctrinaire libertarian on this stuff. Libertarians make the same complaints about the much more reasonable Singaporean controls and I think they are clearly in the wrong there.
————–
The “cohesion” in Japan has come with decades of the kind of economic stagnation that immigration restriction and population decline produces. Immigration in the U.S. has correlated quite nicely with economic growth. The Great Depression happened during one of our times of least immigration.
——————
None of these low IQ brown immigrants has added to our economic growth. Period. End of story. This is EASILY proven with math. It’s so easily proven that people have had to “cancel” anyone who shows the math, because it’s that damning of your ideals.
I don’t like East Asian fertility patterns but I don’t know what to blame. If you look at the fertility of highly urbanized secular westerners (the closest similar group) its rock bottom as well. Smart liberal women in the USA have a TFR of 0.6, makes 1.0 seem like the old maid in the shoe.
—————
Crime in America has been going down, not up in the last quarter century compared to the time before that when America was “great.”
———–
America was “great” in the 50s and 60s. Then leftists like you took over and it got bad. Crime, even crime TODAY after the post crack epidemic drop, is up several hundred % compared to 1960.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
Also keep in mind that attempted murder becomes murder at about 20% of the rate is used to due to improvements in shock trauma care (mostly coming out of innovations from the Vietnam war). So multiply the 2017 murder rate by about five to talk about crime.
————–
The “cohesion” in Singapore has come at the cost of political freedom and freedom of speech. And it’s really not that impressive that they can achieve prosperity in a city state located in one of the most geographically desirable locations anywhere for world trade.
—————-
If it’s not that hard, why can’t brown people form these insanely wealthy and well run city states?
Here’s a good example of what happens when brown people city states come into money.
Youtube: Search “kuwait of the pacific”
I’ll accept reference to Singapores city state nature when it makes sense, but let’s get real. ALL of the countries run by East Asia are run similar and they are all rich and orderly.
And P.S. speech in Singapore isn’t as bad as you paint it either. This is a boogyman version of the reality.
————
The “cohesion” you are so nostalgic for in prior American history is largely the product of a sanitizing of that history anyway. In your world there was more “cohesion” when Jim Crow and lynchings were at their peak.
———-
Yes, I’m UNBELIEVABLY IMPRESSED by your post Jim Crow accomplishments of destroying our inner cities and a 70% black illegitimacy rate and the fact that without $1.5M in lifetime welfare per person paid for by white people they would literally starve to death.
What happened with black people 1965-2019 definitely should not be on the “win” side of anybodies ledger unless you are some kind of psychopath. Then again Bryan Caplan does always say how proud he is that diversity destroys social trust! West Baltimore is an accomplishment in his mind.
asdf,
>—“None of these low IQ brown immigrants has added to our economic growth. Period. End of story. This is EASILY proven with math.”
Mathematical proofs settle mathematical issues. They do not prove social theories about complex conditions with multiple causes most of which cannot even be accurately measured.
You are simple assuming your conclusions and calling it a mathematical proof.
asdf-
The “ideas” I was referring to was basic respect for political discourse and openness to cooperation where it can be sustained. Nothing more.
I am not a Democrat or a leftist. I just happen to disagree with almost everything you post. You may have a good idea of some of what I’m against, but I doubt you have much of a notion for what I’m for.
The problem with an Ideological Turing Test standard is that everyone doesn’t have the same level of openness to debate over their ideas, or to entertain consideration that they are wrong.
For it to have any meaning at all, there needs to be at least some level of willingness to consider, and admit to mistakes.
For me, it is simply amazing how many thing Trump and anti-Trumps do and say is long run insignificant. Really the Russian and Ukraine* scandals are extremely small potatoes in the scheme of things. The claims about crowd size or drawing on the weather map are really meaningless. And building The Wall is not important because anybody who knows anything about Border Patrol knows the Wall is 98% ineffective. (Being a complete Peacenik…Trump has done wonders to avoiding military action in Iran and Venezuela if you think about it.)
These controversies are Stupid in general. I know every President has stupid controversies like Clinton Midnight Basketball or Reagan stating Ketchup is vegetable but they would happen every six months or so.
So it is hard for me to think Trump has massively changed Republican/conservative ideology versus a simple idea that voters are bored and really wanted a ‘Reality Show’ President.
*The problem with the Ukraine scandal for Trump is:
1) The evidence is simple and direct here so proves everybody prior belief of what is wrong with Trump as President. (This a Nate Silver law)
2) It may prove the James Bond line “When seeking revenge, dig two graves” So it is very likely to take Biden out but it was dumb to use this scandal 4 months before Primary voting.
The Modern Left, which includes a lot of Af-Am and Hispanic-Americans, and Paleoconservatives are politically close but generally don’t like each other in nature. And Donald Trump is the Paleoconservative hero, as Pat Buchanan loves him, so you see what is driving the difference here is. And isn’t Buchanan really the ideological version of Trump’s politics?
1) We will have to see if the PostModern Left moves center as they grow older. Remember Obama was more PostModern Left in 2008 campaign and governed completely Modern Left. Could we see the same thing with Warren who was once a Republican? And suspect a lot of the suburban women who a generation ago were Bush soccer moms, simply want pre-existing conditions protected and modest gun reform? (And my problem with Biden is Modern Left rallied completely around a candidate that lost his fastball.)
2) There are two economic issues that divides the groups: Healthcare that Paloconservatives don’t like and Free Trade/Open Borders which the Modern Left usually likes.
I do think Paleoconservatives have a great point about modern capitalism has completely weakened religion community while changing the family expectations of young people. Look up Korean or Singapore birth rates some time.
However, the goal of paleoconservatives of returning to the 1965 economy with a manufacturing based male workforce is complete fantasy. (They celebrate all of Trump’s deal and only focus on manufacturing jobs changes.)
Kling, more than most American classical-liberals/libertarians, seems to appreciate that some political outcomes are due to the different mechanics of 1. presidential, 2. parliamentary, and 3. proportional systems.
Each system seems to have turning points when coalition-building is critical. Perhaps we overemphasize the human agency of politicians at the expense of understanding the patterns inherent in each political system/machine.
+1
“If Senator Warren wins the Presidency, then the Postmodern Left will attempt to govern with almost 2/3 of the country in disagreement with them.”
Many Trump supporters (postmodern right) appear to like Warren’s ideas on industrial policy.
I think you’ve incorrectly implied that Christian believers only exist in the Traditional camp and are hostile to capitalism. That seems unwarranted, and a common (and strikes me as unfounded) assumption among sociologists.
The Core Conservatives probably have as large a contingent of Christian believers (although perhaps not quite as high a proportion as not). It seems to me that you’re really focused on the “New Era Enterprisers,” which is really just another way of saying libertarian or even liberaltarian.
I think that Christianity is properly said to be “skeptical” of pure versions of socialism or capitalism. I don’t think hostility is the correct word.
If a country is rich and getting richer but at the cost of worsening the economic well being of many others, especially the poor, that is a problem from a Christian perspective. Private property is good and useful in serving the common good, but it has limits. A foot is good and useful to a body under most circumstances, but a gangrenous foot no longer serves the good of the body but threatens it and should be cut off. If a starving man with nothing comes to your house and begs for bread, and your house is well stocked with food, you have a moral obligation to give him some despite those slices of bread being your private property. It is hardly serving the common good for your bread to remain in your home and the starving man die needlessly. Nevertheless, this principle is carried too far by socialists as some may insist this man has a right to this bread every day for the rest of his life, merely by existing, even if he could obtain some with his own effort. The man has the right to some assistance, but then the duty to take responsibility for himself as soon as he can.
NCC 2019 featured Tucker Carlson, Yoram Hazony, and Michael Anton. Kling highlighted a talk from “Paulina Neuding on how immigration is affecting Sweden”.
Is that what Kling is categorizing as “market skeptic”? Not “immigration skeptic” but “market skeptic”?
I suspect Kling is being deliberately dishonest. He knows better. He knows that Yoram Hazony’s book, “The Virtue of Nationalism” wasn’t about “market skepticism”. He knows Micheal Anton isn’t against markets. And Kling knows that Trump’s signature issue was “Build the Wall”, “America First” immigration restriction and promoting traditional national identity, not fighting against markets in general.
Kling’s central theme of recent years is understanding and those that politically disagree with you and engaging their best ideas in their best form. Kling is doing the opposite here. Kling is clearly failing the ideological turing test. He’s branding his rivals with language that they would obviously reject.
And while Kling claims that the NCC/Trump crowd “are the folks trying to throw Republican-leaning libertarians under the bus.”, I’m seeing a lot of the reverse. Kling is trying to throw them under the bus. Kling recently criticized Trump for insulting John McCain, but when John McCain was calling the Republican voters “crazies”, and throwing them under the bus, Kling certainly didn’t object.
But politics is coalition building long term and there are plenty of times voters support a candidate they have 30% of disagreements.
1) I think call Trump’s Republicans what they are Paleoconservatism which Pat Buchanan has been a leading voice for decades. (And remember it Paleo that helped bring union members to become Reagan Democrats.) And Kling has written that Republicans should focus on winning Grandparent votes but good luck rolling back Social Security.
2) Honestly most successful Presidents really are able to pass 20 -25% of what they want and most of that is their first 2 years. Then after their Midterm loss successful Presidents manage the center for 2 or 6 years.
Tucker Carlson is definitely a market skeptic. This summer there was a story in WaPo headlined ‘She sounds like Trump at his best’: Tucker Carlson endorses Elizabeth Warren’s economic populism.
As I mentioned earlier, I would say skeptic doesn’t mean against. I would say it means markets are good, so long as they serve the common good (which they often do). However, the market skeptics think that in X, Y and Z areas unchecked market forces are detrimental to the common good. In fairness, perhaps they could be sold on “markets fail, use markets”.
My main point wasn’t specifically about Tucker Carlson… It’s that Kling is knowingly twisting all opposition on the immigration issue to “market skepticism”, which seems dishonest.
Yes, sometimes Tucker Carlson expresses market skepticism and populism and other times he supports markets and capitalism. I think Carlson is clearly wrong in his skepticism. His hostility towards Amazon is unwarranted, in particular.
Kling can be “market skeptical” too. Generally, Kling is pro-market, but consider higher ed. Kling sees serious problems in higher ed that are important to solve. Kling has been unsympathetic to efforts to privatize higher ed or push it in a free market direction or reduce government involvement. I don’t think Kling is strongly opposed to such reforms, but he’s unsympathetic to them.
Kling used a quote from an article that referenced the label Pew invented for this group of people: “Market Skeptic Republicans.” He rightly points out that some member of this group are rallying under the “National Conservatism” brand.
Naming/branding/labeling new things is hard. Let’s not read too much into Kling’s motivations. There was not any personal choice in this specific chain of references.
Max Stirner says “What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.”
Although the Quillette article is interesting and insightful, the poles approach might be arbitrarily limiting and blending too many strains of thought to be worthwhile.
Proportional representation in Brazil’s 513 seat Chamber of Deputies allows political participation for a far more diverse range of viewpoints that might perhaps mirror to some extent the splintering of US political identities. Six baskets is simply not enough.
I would submit that the Brazilian system of governance is wholly superior to that of the USA in every respect.
Even just a brief description of the parties represented and the number of seats held as of February, 2019 suggests that there a lot of nuanced differences between parties and that certain priorities are able to attract larger shares of the electorate. All 20 of the US Democratic Party presidential candidates could have a separate party.
In the USA, 2020 is going to be a one-issue election: Trump (if he is not removed from office prior). And candidates for the House of Representatives are going to be judged on that one issue. No such binary blinders in Brazil.
Proportional representation would enable vastly greater nuance and if presented the opportunity, it would not be surprising at all if the USA electorate fell out along proportions similar to the way they have recently in Brazil:
1. Workers’ Party – 55 seats -democratic socialist, strongest in the poorer North, has in recent years become less hostile to markets
2. Social Liberal Party – 54 seats – Bolsonaro’s party, currently described as economically liberal, nationalist, radically anti-communist and socially conservative.
3. Progressives – 39 seats – center right, liberal conservative, considered classically liberal although generally pro-worker and anti-tax
4. Liberal Party (complicated name change history switched back this year from Party of the Republic) – 38 seats (7.4%) – originally founded by the great anti-slavery crusader Joaquim Nabuco, generally designated pro-market conservative but dubbed the business man’s workers party. Strong base in Sao Paulo.
5. Social Democrat Party – 36 seats – common sense type of party along the lines of international Christian Democrat parties, considered far-right by the left but generally a centrist party
6. Brazilian Democratic Movement – 34 seats – centrist – founded as a legal, civil movement of opposition to the old Brazilian military government, badly tarred by corruption scandals, now deemed far-right by the press but maintains that it is a centrist “catch-all” party
7. Brazilian Socialist Party – 32 seats – a left-wing party abandoned by hard-core leftists because it tried to attract center right voters
8. Republicanos – 31 seats – a party since 2005, its founders included Bishop Marcelo Crivella, members include Ronaldinho, top issue appears to be inequality
9. Brazilian Social Democracy Party – 30 seats – third way social democrat unaligned with trade unions
10. Democrats – 29 seats – Originally known as the Liberal Front, the party changed its name according to political scientist Jairo Nicolau, the Democrats party was was launched to be a modern right-wing party, with a new program, and aimed at the urban middle classes; a kind of Conservative Party of the UK”
11. Democratic Labour Party – 28 seats – Participates in Socialist International, described as pro-labour and social democracy orientation with nationalism and populism, organized in state and municipal directories and also in cooperational social movements, such as the Black Movement, the Labour Woman Association, the Labour Syndicate Union, the Socialist Youth and the Green Labour Movement
12. Solidarity – 13 seats – Wikipedia: “has strong links with Força Sindical, a labour union that historically strongly opposes the hegemony of Central Única dos Trabalhadores and other leftist labour movements in favor of a less ideological and more pragmatic approach, “Sindicalismo de Resultados” (Unionism of Results), which means less ideology and more direct gains for the working class.”
13. Podemos – 12 seats – Formerly National Labour Party, Wikipedia – “the organization was renamed inspired in the chant “Yes, we can” from the 2008 Barack Obama campaign to the presidency. According to the party’s leadership, Podemos was inspired by an international line of movements that propose to listen to people, defend causes of collective interest and together decide the future of the nation, a model that claims to leave the old dispute between left or right and chooses to go forward, every day dividing more the country’s decisions with the population”
14. Brazilian Labour Party – 11 seats – a center left party in a center right coalition
15. Socialism and Liberty Party – 10 seats – socialism, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism with Marxist, Trotskyist, eco-socialist, and syndicalist tendencies
16. Republican Party of the Social Order – 10 seats – communist, part of the “People Happy Again Alliance”
17. Social Christian Party – 9 seats – conservative christian
18. New Party – 8 seats – libertarian, founded 2011, does not take any stance on social issues like abortion and legalization of drugs, pro-gun rights, supports same sex marriage
19. Avante – 7 seats – populist centrist dissidents from the Brazilian Labour Party
20. Patriota – 5 seats – conservative party with links to the Assembly of God church
21. Green Party – 4 seats – main items on agenda are federalism, environmentalism, human rights, a form of direct democracy, parliamentarism, welfare, civil liberties, pacifism and marijuana legalization under specific conditions.
22. Party of National Mobilization – 1 seat – agrarian reform
23. Sustainability Network – 1 seat – environmentalist, third way
Off topic, my apoligies, but speaking of Quillette, don’t miss Flynn’s troubling report of his publisher’s decision not to go ahead with his book defending free speech, because they worry about legal trouble. https://quillette.com/2019/09/24/my-book-defending-free-speech-has-been-banned/
James Flynn is a mainstream and respectable academic whose insight into rising IQ scores is widely cited with enthusiasm by progressives. The book is by all accounts entirely civil and balanced. And yet such a case is now effectively outside the Overton Window now, not because it endorses controversial positions, but because it mentions those controversies. CATO should publish it.
This is why speech is different. Once free speech is gone, you can’t get it back, because in addition to losing the ability to say certain things, you also lose the capacity to even argue for that ability. Orwell, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
At a recent event with many libertarians and libertarian-leaning conservatives in attendance, I was greatly disheartened to learn that most of the younger people there hated the state (and the idea of state intervention to protect these values, though having more or less accepted the legitimacy of the current regime protecting everything else) more than they feared this trend and more than they loved the idea of a society where people felt free to express their honest sentiments without fear of effective excommunication.
The “throw under the bus” expression was used to discuss the Market-Skeptical Right’s rejection of orthodox Libertarian positions on economics and trade. But I also got the feeling that people with suppressed opinions (which now includes James Flynn of all people, and the opinion that we shouldn’t be suppressing opinions) were being thrown under the bus by Libertarians unwilling to do anything but watch as the noose tightens around the throat of what’s left of the character of a free society.
Or I’ll put it this way. It was clear that if faced with the hard questions of whether to watch free expression die or have to bite the bullet and let the state add the class of opinion to its anti-discrimination regime, it seemed to me that most young libertarians would choose the death of free speech.
When one argues that libertarians should try to learn something from progressives, they usually come back and say something, “Ah, yes, I learned about the oppressions of racism … yadda yadda.” That’s the wrong lesson to learn from the progressives though. The right lesson to learn is that coercion is more than just state action or private violence, and that there is a whole range of social pressure that can reach a level of ubiquity and severity that it might as well be state action in terms of the social values and room for individual nonconformity one claims to care about.
The libertarian approach has been to oppose state coercion with law, and also to oppose social coercion with law, but only the kinds of social coercions the progressives care about. The ones non-progressives care about are to be opposed with nothing (but insular complaining) and so permitted to pass away. That feels an awful lot like “under the bus”, and now even James Flynn has to try and wash the tire tread stains out of his tweed jacket.
Using the phrase “illegal alien” is now apparently a justiciable offense and potentially subject to fines of $250,000. https://nypost.com/2019/09/26/city-bans-calling-someone-an-illegal-alien-out-of-hate/
We will hear not a peep from the people who have appropriated the libertarian mantle.
From Flynn’s article:
Even more off topic… why writers don’t self-publish is a head scratcher for me. Is legal liability an important consideration? It seems to me that the traditional book publishing deal is akin to an elaborate pay day loan.
Warren needs to run on Trump dirt.
If she mentions Medicare for All she frightens the 20 million families who were hit with $500/month Obamacare taxes. This group has a lifetime of voters regret on Obamacare and will reject another massive medical restructure. Warren has not been around long enough to collect dirt, and she is not from California.
Warrens set of plans to remake the economy, but can only go one step. She might get a wealth tax, a one time fee. Then, like, all other presidents, she is a congested president defending prior for the rest of her term. She needs to run against the leftwards and their multiple plans to remake our lives, move to the center, recognize the limits of the presidency and quit filling our heads with delusions. That is a winner.
It seems to me that if you apply postmodernism to economics, the result is skepticism of macro theories etc., not skepticism of markets. The idea that chaotic and untameable markets somehow fulfill the myriad wants of diverse individuals through processes that are difficult to measure seems a lot more compatible with postmodernism than the idea that the economy could benefit from rational central planning.
Macro theories are ‘Modern’, but there are two ways to reject them.
‘Post-Modern’ rejection is really anti-modern on a fundamental level with regards to basic epistemology and the philosophy of objective truths which can be empirically validated by observation and experiment.
‘Reformed Modern’ rejection shares the same epistemology and outlook (materialist, scientific), but says that the early-modern efforts were unjustifiably overconfident and had far too much hubris and far too little humility regarding irreducible complexity, causal density, and the fundamental limits of human understanding and capacity to infer ‘laws’ which can justify policy based on the claim that it could be implemented with accurately predictable effects.
Your Post-Modern/Reformed Modern distinction is what in a previous thread I called bad post-modernism and good post-modernism. Deirdre McCloskey calls herself a post-modernist; you would call her a reformed modernist; I call her a good post-modernist.
Point well taken with respect to rejection of macro, but what about the rejection of markets in general?
Arnold’s 3 axes are different than these traditional/modern/ post-modern variations, but neither set is as relevant as
Nationalism vs Globalism. Somewhere people vs Anywhere people.
Worldwide.
Closest is the Bobo vs non-Bobo, but that is because the college educated Bobos are mostly Globalists, and pretty fairly described by that one word.
Nationalism vs. Globalism certainly captures Trump protectionist policies but I’d argue that the European Union promotes a perspective that is a hybrid of the two; cosmopolitanism between the states that make up western Europe but nationalism/continentalism when it comes to free trade with non-European economies. There were thoughtful conservative/libertarian thinkers, like Matt Ridley, that argued for Brexit on the grounds that it was utterly ridiculous that England did not have free trade with the United States nor historical economic partners such as Canada.
Like many models, all these perspectives are often useful but they are ultimately approximations that can sometimes be misleading.
Speaking from somewhere inbetween “modern left” and “postmodern left”, the great decline in the modern left has many causes, but one prominent one was that a sweeping win in 2008 — 60 senators and a huge margin — led not to the victory of mainline Modern Left policy, but warmed-over technocratic center, center-right, or sometimes outright conservative policy.
Plainly put, the modern left couldn’t get it done, and moreover its victory helped stir up the hornet’s nest of the postmodern right in 2010 — who, for six years, people deceived themselves into thinking were libertarians or some such–but they were always Trump populists, they just needed a Trump to come along to discover it. Obama of course moved left with executive-implemented policy over the next 6 years, which led to its own problems and much of which has now been reversed.
So the left has realized that if you can’t win by simply winning, you have to follow the suit of the postmodern right. The sometimes worrying but potentially more successful postmodern left could be said to be the result.